


Uneasy Hearts

by atreiya



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Gen, Lots of swearing - just warning you.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 06:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10507725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atreiya/pseuds/atreiya
Summary: A short story set after the end of The Last of Us about Ellie and Joel dealing with the fallout of St. Mary's and its effect on their relationship.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's pretty clear that Ellie knows something happened by the time she and Joel return to Jackson, if not exactly what happened. Somehow, I don't think she'd let the issue drop for the long-term. You'll note the use of "Through the Valley" at the end. I'd actually been working on this story for a while and was almost done - had the ending more or less planned out - but then I saw the TLoU2 trailer and decided, hmm, this song is kind of appropriate for Joel and Ellie, so I added it in. 
> 
> Anyhow, credit to Shawn James for Through the Valley (song lyrics and music pretty obviously his) and to Naughty Dog for the world of TLoU, Joel, Ellie, and all the other characters from the game.

_Fall—Year One, Jackson_

"I _know_ ," Ellie said.

Joel nodded. It might have taken a full year for her to get around to it, but he'd always reckoned that it would happen sooner or later. Ellie was a smart girl. He dropped his fork on his plate and pushed his chair away from the table, his appetite for the venison stew suddenly gone.

"So," he said, "tell me what it is you _think_ you know, Ellie." He had crossed his arms defensively and was sounding mulish. He also had that look in his eye that said he wasn't about to give an inch of ground.

Ellie sighed, knowing that Joel was going to make her fight to get the truth out of him. Though some of his rougher edges had slowly worn away after they'd settled in Jackson, he was still guarded and still about as stubborn as fuck.

A year ago she had accepted his story about what had happened with Marlene and the Fireflies, because it was just easier to let things lie. _Pun absolutely intended there!_ Ellie thought. She had been so tired and emotionally drained after St. Mary's that she almost didn't care about what was going on around her. And to add an extremely shitty cherry on top, the nightmares that she'd been experiencing ever since she'd escaped from David had gotten worse after they returned to Jackson.

Joel had quietly watched over her on the bad nights, and there had been a _lot_ of them for the first few months. Henry, Sam, Tess, Riley—she dreamt of them gathered around her on a moonlit beach raising their voices in unison like a Greek chorus as they pointed their spectral fingers at her accusingly and condemned her for their deaths. Still, any guilt trips laid on her by these four figments of her tortured psyche had been downright pleasant compared to the nightmares involving David and his town. Sometimes she found herself trapped in the burning restaurant while playing an endless game of cat and mouse with David. Other times she was back in the locked cell and had to watch in horror as a human corpse was butchered right in front of her by one of David's men. There were also the nightmares in which David tried to strangle her and she fought back; she almost always woke up screaming right at the moment when his hands were around her throat and the pressure just grew and grew until she couldn't breathe and was close to blacking out.

It had mattered to Ellie that Joel had been there for her on those nights, ever her faithful, if somewhat grizzled, sentinel who protected her from the horrors that her unconscious mind insisted on dredging up. More than being her protector, she felt that they were _family_ to each other after everything they'd been through together—and she had it in her head that family shouldn't lie to each other. That was how she believed it _should_ work in an ideal world, but she was a pragmatist and knew that the reality was that Joel had lied before and would continue to lie if he believed that he had a good enough reason to do it.

It was their last scavenging trip to nearby Granville earlier in the summer that had caused the scales to tip for Ellie from silently accepting what Joel had said to wanting to know the full truth. Though it was supposed to have been a milk run, their little trip sure as hell hadn't worked out that way. After coming close to death for the first time in a long while, she had decided that if she were ever to die, she didn't want her last thoughts to be about the one question that only Joel could answer.

 

_Summer, Year One—Granville_

Ellie and Joel had found the remains of a small Asian market, the odor of decay and rotting wood almost overpowering as they entered it. The exotic spices that had once lined the walls had left behind traces of themselves, the faint melange of their scents barely there like the presence of a forgotten ghost. Broken bottles had been strewn across the floor, carelessly tossed aside by earlier scavengers. They had scouted the building to make sure that it was clear and then started collecting all the glass they could, each keeping a wary eye on the empty doorways that led into the building.

The community was finally growing its own food in Jackson, though it was still a bit touch and go. In addition to scavenging in order to supplement their food supplies, they were also keeping an eye out for whatever recyclables that they could find. After all, it was a hell of a lot easier to melt existing glass down than it was to go and mine silica—that's if you could even figure out where to mine the right kind of sand in their area _and_ avoid tangling with the infected along the way. Fortunately, these broken bottles were exactly what they'd been looking for. As Ellie and Joel sorted through the material to separate the colored pieces of glass from clear ones, they heard the distant roar of an engine, one that was drawing closer to them. _The horses had been tied up out front and would be visible,_ she thought, giving Joel a worried look.

Joel motioned for her to hide behind the counter closest to the front entrance. Ellie sneezed as she disturbed a patch of mold and kicked up a small cloud of its spores, glad that it was nothing worse than that. He carefully planted a nail bomb near the back entrance before joining Ellie behind the counter. As the vehicle finally pulled to a stop outside, they could hear the engine rattling and coughing before the driver turned it off.

Listening as the doors to the truck—at least it had sounded like one to her—opened, Joel held up four fingers with his free hand. They readied their guns as the men outside roared with laughter and started making whinnying noises at the horses.

"Warren, shut the fuck up," said one voice. With exaggerated politeness the same voice continued, "We have us some guests, so let's give them a warm welcome, gentlemen."

"Jacob, what about the horses?" a second voice asked.

"Fuck the horses. You don't even know how to ride one, Earl—you'd probably break your neck if you tried," Jacob said. "What do _you_ think, Bobby?"

The fourth man let out a sigh and cocked his weapon. "I think whoever's in there had best come out now. We can do this easy, or we can do it hard. Tick-tock, time's a wastin', folks."

"Hunters, fucking hunters," Joel muttered under his breath. His eyes closed in something akin to a prayer. When they opened again, Ellie could see the disgust in them that always seemed to bubble to the surface in these situations. Maybe the reason he hated them so much was because it shamed him to be reminded of what he'd once been.

"Hard way it is," Bobby said.

The hunters had done the math. The question now was whether they would charge in and try to overwhelm them or not. Ellie and Joel waited quietly, the minutes slipping by as nothing happened. They weren't going to leave, and their enemies weren't coming in—not yet anyway.

The sudden boom at the back entrance startled them, as did a high-pitched scream. "My leg! My fucking leg," moaned Earl.

They could seem him crawling on the ground as he tried to get away. His leg was shredded so badly that you could see right down to the bone, and his foot was dangling, barely attached by thin threads of muscle and skin. He was crying and screaming hysterically about bleeding to death. Ellie figured he was probably right about that, judging by the amount of blood trailing behind him.

Distracted by Earl's howling and the gruesome sight of his leg, Ellie didn't notice the object that came flying through the front door at first. Sudden motion at the periphery of her vision made her turn, and then she saw the grenade as it arced past her towards the ground. She tried to yell at Joel to get down, but there was a flash of bright light and a deafening noise—a flashbang grenade.

Tears streamed down her face and she couldn't hear a damned thing, so she had no idea if Joel had heard her warning. The hunters wanted them alive for some reason, probably to torture them or worse, but she'd be damned if she'd let them take her like David had. Ellie hunched down, blinking to try to clear her vision. She had a shotgun and aimed it in the general direction of where she'd last heard voices, letting loose with a quick blast to hold them off. After what felt like forever, she could finally see blobby shapes. Her ears were still ringing, but she could hear Joel yelling now.

"You want him? Then one of you can come on in—without your weapons. I'm givin' you one minute!" Joel shouted.

"Alright, man. Since he's _your_ friend, you're going in, Warren," Bobby said.

"But I—" Whatever Warren meant to say was interrupted by the sound of a revolver's hammer being pulled back.

Ellie closed her eyes for a minute and opened them again. There was an aura around everything that made her feel like she was looking through a pair of vaseline-smeared lenses, but she could see Joel aiming his .44 at a man with short, greasy hair. The man was holding his hands up to show that they were empty, and Joel motioned at him to move.

Earl's skin was pale beneath the grime covering his face, and his eyes had rolled up in his head by the time Warren reached him. Warren immediately started tearing at Earl's shirt to try make a tourniquet, but Joel said, "No. You drag him out right now, or else."

"But he's bleeding to death!" Warren exclaimed.

"And?" Joel asked, his voice as cold as ice. "You just tried to kill us—which ain't exactly makin' me feel kindly towards you. I don't give two fucks whether he bleeds out or not."

Warren cursed and started dragging his friend back, but Jacob and Bobby had other plans. The truck crashed through the front entrance, causing Warren to yelp and dive out of the way. A sickening series of crunches told her that Earl no longer had to worry about bleeding to death—or much of anything else for that matter.

"What the hell?!" shouted Ellie over the din. Dust from the rotten wood and plaster created a haze, but she could could see the shadows cast on the floor by the two men who had jumped out of the still-running truck and hidden behind it. Joel shot Warren as he suddenly tried to make a dash for the safety of the truck. The exit wound was large enough that Ellie could see through to the other side before he collapsed in a heap.

"I'd say that we seem to be at a standoff," Joel said.

"We surely are," Bobby said agreeably.

"Then maybe you should get in that truck of yours and leave before I kill you," Joel said.

Jacob guffawed at that. "No way we're going now, not after you cost us two men."

" _Useless_ men," Joel said. "You know they didn't have it in 'em to be hunters, so the way I see it, I did you a goddamned favor by gettin' rid of your dead weight. It'd be in your interests to de-escalate this before it's too late."

Bobby sounded almost admiring as he said, "You have a pair of stones on you for a tourist. Hell, you could almost be one of us. That's why I'm gonna hate having to do this."

Joel muttered, "I _was_ one of you—but not anymore."

They didn't hear Joel's words as he aimed, not at Bobby or Jacob, but one of the rotting beams above them. Termites, time, and water had already done most of the work for Joel. He squinted and fired, the crack of the bullet partially masking the sounds that the beam was making as it began to fracture and split. Bobby and Jacob had about a second to look up before the ceiling fell on them.

Ellie and Joel walked over to the men, hearing one of them coughing. Jacob was buried under the pile of rubble, his legs sticking out, motionless. Bobby was still alive, but he was pinned down by a large section of the main beam. His arms were moving weakly, and he was coughing up dark red clots of blood.

"C'mon, kiddo, we've got to get going before the infected show up," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Ellie shook her head and looked up at him as he tried to shepherd her out. "You can't leave him like that."

Joel sighed and thought about how he'd been in a similar situation when he and Tess had used their smuggling tunnel out of Boston. They'd found a man trapped down there who had begged him to put him out of his misery. Joel had looked at him and then taken the ammo nearby, leaving him there to die alone.

Tess had looked at him and said one thing: _You're a hard man, Texas._ He couldn't tell if it had been a compliment or if she'd disapproved of him saving ammo, so he'd shrugged it off. It wasn't as if mercy had been a particularly useful quality to possess in their line of work, and he'd buried any impulses he'd had along those lines so far down that he could almost pretend that they had never existed. Besides, it was the volatile mix of anger and hatred that floated just beneath the surface that had kept him going for close to two decades.

But as hard as he tried to never feel anything at all, Tess's last words to him had still stung. She had been right about them both being shitty people, and he _did_ owe her because of what they'd had together. It had been as close to love as two damaged people like them could get. When he saw Tess's body in the rotunda from the balcony, it had hollowed him out—that was the exact moment that he knew what it was that he had felt for her.

And then the anger had rushed in like a tidal wave to fill the sudden emptiness inside. It had been all that he could do to not start cursing the girl out and to leave her there. He had resented being saddled with an unwanted burden at the time, but Tess had been right about the girl's resistance to the fungus. The girl _might_ be the key to saving humanity, and he'd seen the desperation and hope in Tess's eyes, her desire for the world to be more than just a place where you had to do terrible things and be less than human just to survive.

Joel had chosen to honor her last wish, and it had ended up saving him. The killing, the torturing, the stealing—it had all been a part of him for so long that he almost didn't know how to stop anymore. But then, before it was too late for him, Ellie had pulled him back from the edge of the abyss by reminding him what it was to be a father.

He'd never said it out loud, but he loved Ellie just as fiercely as he had Sarah, even though he'd fought against that love with all his might at first. Right up until that moment in the farmhouse when they'd had their blowout, Joel had tried to deny its existence. Only in the aftermath was he finally able to admit it to himself. Ellie would never replace Sarah—no child ever could—but she was his heart now and as much a daughter to him as a daughter of his own blood. And as with Sarah, there were no limits to what he'd do to protect his family.

As for today, he again faced the same decision he'd had to make when he was down in the tunnel with Tess. This time he chose differently, aiming his .44 between Bobby's eyes and pulling the trigger to put the man out of his misery. The gun roared like a cannon, the noise reverberating through the building as Joel and Ellie walked out together.

 

_Fall—Year One, Jackson_

Joel had always seemed like a contradiction to her in some ways. He'd killed those hunters in Granville so emotionlessly that it was almost hard to believe that he was the same man who'd sat by her bedside night after night and tried to teach her the guitar by day. Ellie knew that it was hard to hold on to things like compassion and kindness and hope in the ruins of a world that had, by and large, descended into savagery. The brutality just became a part of you on some level, especially when you had to fight for your life and kill to survive on an almost daily basis. It had clearly become a part of him after two decades, but the man that had existed before the end of the world was still in there somewhere.

Ellie continued to stare at Joel, who clenched his jaw and stared right back at her. After tiring of their nascent staring contest, she felt the distinct urge to grab him by the collar and shake some sense into him but didn't give in to it. Unless she experienced a sudden growth spurt in the next five seconds, she was still about a foot shorter than him and a whole lot lighter. Ellie finally said, "Just fucking stop it, Joel! Tell me the truth about the hospital, the Fireflies— _everything._ I know that you lied to me."

Joel bobbed his head agitatedly and sounded angry as he said, "Fine, then let's start with the most important truth: I lied to keep you from takin' on more guilt than I thought you could bear—the kind of guilt that ended up killin' Henry by makin' him point a gun at his head and pull the fucking trigger. And here's _another_ truth: I lied because I'm a selfish fuck." He crossed his arms and looked at her unhappily, his stiff posture indicating that he was about to completely shut down.

Ellie shook her head and said, "No, Joel, you don't get to clam the hell up because you don't want to talk—not anymore. And yeah, you can be a selfish fuck, but nobody's perfect." Giving Joel a crooked grin, she sat in the chair across from him and added, "Anyhow, I thought we'd totally worked out the whole I-ask-you-answer thing by the time we got to Utah."

His eyes turned dark and flinty at her words. Leaning back in his chair, he took a deep breath and said, "Losing Sarah nearly killed me, and I just couldn't go through that again with you."

Joel was being evasive, and she wasn't having any of it this time. Knowing exactly where to hit him, Ellie said, "What was it you told me that time? _'You got one thing right—you're not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain't your dad.'"_

He looked as if she'd punched him hard in the gut, and his twang seemed to become more pronounced—a sign of the stress he was under. "That's low, Ellie. You know I didn't mean a word of it. I was angry at myself for makin' you run away, and then I was even angrier about just how much you disappearing like that scared the livin' shit out of me."

She dipped her head apologetically. "Guess that wasn't fair of me. But hey, I did learn how to fight dirty from _you_ after all. Maybe you thought I'd hate you for whatever it is that you've done, but I could've handled it, Joel."

He laughed bitterly at that. She was older than her years, but sometimes she still saw the world with the eyes of a child. At first he'd viewed her optimism and hopefulness with disdain, chalking it up to youthful naïveté. But even though he was a jaded cynic, he'd gradually started to come around. She'd almost made him a true believer in the cure by the time they'd gotten to St. Mary's—and then Marlene had turned things upside down. "I ain't so sure about that, Ellie. Not after you've heard all of it."

Ellie sat opposite him and said, "I'll be honest with you, and maybe you'll do the same with me. When I said 'okay' back then, I said it because I was barely hanging on.  I'm stronger than that now. Endure _and_ survive, remember?"

 Joel closed his eyes, defeated by her words and her relentlessness. This wasn't something that he wanted to get into with Ellie right now, though he could have said that about a lot of parts of his life after the outbreak. However, he was now facing the distinct possibility of losing the girl whom he saw as a second daughter if he didn't tell the truth.

He buried his face in his hands, his words muffled as he said, "I killed 'em, all of 'em—even Marlene after she _begged_ me not to." He looked up at her, defiance in his eyes as he added, "But I don't regret it one fucking bit, because I _saved_ you."

Ellie inhaled sharply and visibly recoiled from him. "Why? They were supposed to save us, all of us. And you _killed_ them all?"

"I hauled you out of the water after you fell in, and you weren't breathin'—'course you don't remember that. Two Fireflies showed up while I was tryin' to bring you back, and one of 'em knocked me out cold. Next thing you know, I come to in the hospital with Marlene and one of her goons in the room. That's when she told me you'd already been prepped for surgery—said they needed to remove the parasite to engineer the vaccine." Joel got up and walked over to his backpack, rummaging around until he found a small package that he tossed to her. "It's all there. I kept it in case this day ever came. The important part is that she also said the parasite couldn't be removed without killing the host."

Ellie took out the recorders and set them aside. Then she started flipping through the journal, her green eyes widening in surprise at the entries. "Jesus," she muttered as she continued to turn the pages.

"There wasn't any kind of a guarantee that they'd succeed at it either. They were going to sacrifice you and gamble on some kinda fucking _maybe_. Baby girl, you'd fought so damned hard to make it there alive that I couldn't just let 'em do that to you." He was silent for a minute before adding, "Marlene, she was just as stubborn as you are. She was never gonna give up on that cure, and she would've hunted us down and killed you for what's inside your head if I'd let her go."

She tugged on her ponytail, a sign that she was deep in thought as she tried to process everything. "I believed in them, and Marlene knew my mom, you know? They were friends, and she was supposed to look out for me. I _trusted_ her."

Joel sighed and got up, walking over to Ellie, who let him approach. He kissed the top of her head and smoothed down a stray lock of hair that had escaped its tie. "Thing is, I believe that she really did care about you."

Ellie said, "That didn't stop her."

"No, it didn't," he said, stroking her hair soothingly. "I guess we were both torn between you and saving the goddamned world...only she made the tough call, the one that I couldn't make. Guess that probably makes her a better person than me."

Joel took one of the recorders and squinted at it before hitting play. It'd been a while, and he didn't recall which one held Marlene's last voice entries. He and Ellie listened in silence as Marlene's voice emerged from the ether.

Ellie had an unreadable expression on her face the whole time. "Well, fuck," she said as the recording ended.

"At one point she said that you'd have wanted 'em to go through with it—tryin' to convince me it was true. Then we got back to Jackson, and...I started to believe that she'd been right about what you would have wanted. The things you'd been sayin', the way you'd been actin' on the way back home, hell, it worried me. And _you_ just told me that you were barely hanging on, so I reckon I was justified." He seemed convinced that he hadn't made the wrong decision.

Ellie shrugged. "I didn't want to die, if that's what you were thinking, not really. It's just that everything seemed so fucking pointless. I felt like I had this one chance to change everything and it slipped through my fingers." She started scratching at her bite scar but stopped once she noticed what she was doing. "And it turns out that it was because of you."

"Baby girl, I'm sorry I wasn't stronger," he said, shaking his head. "I should've let you go, but I  _couldn't_."

Ellie got up and looked out the window at the mountains to try to clear her head Her thoughts and feelings were a tangled knot with Joel at the center. She said, "Part of me is glad that you didn't. I mean, I'm here and I'm alive...but you _did_ lie to me for a whole year about something pretty fucking major. I need to think things through by myself for a while."

Joel protested, "But I can't just let you—"

Ellie interrupted him and angrily asked, "Let me what? Let me go, Joel? You took away my choice once, and you're not doing it again. If you want me to come back, then you'll give me the goddamned space that I need."

He stoically accepted her rebuke and then said, "Maria and Tommy are gonna have my hide over this, you know."

"They'll forgive you eventually," she said, her eyes softening slightly. "I might, too."

The next morning she was gone.

 

_Summer—Year Two, Jackson_

Tommy and Maria had laid into Joel as soon as he told them about what had happened, and Tommy had been pissed with him ever since. His little brother had taken quite a shine to Ellie _and_ he'd been a Firefly in the past, so he hadn't reacted well after hearing the whole story—and for once Joel had told the full, unvarnished truth.

Joel picked up the pot he'd found sitting on the porch and lifted the lid, smelling braised rabbit. Maria. Tommy wasn't going to let up until Ellie was back, but Maria had clearly thawed a bit towards him. He put the pot on the stove and sighed over having to reheat it later. It was his turn on fence inspection, so he had to get to the stables by eight and wouldn't be back until he was done checking the eastern border with his team.

It had been six months since Ellie had left by his count. In the first two months, Ellie had stayed completely away from town. At the end of the third month, she'd shown up briefly in Jackson to stock up on some necessities and stopped by to tell him where she was staying—a cabin north of the town. Ever since then, she'd started visiting more regularly, but she still hadn't moved back in with Joel. He couldn't blame her for that.

Nodding at those who greeted him, he muttered a few bland pleasantries and tried to get on his way as quickly as possible before anyone could ask him about Ellie. He greeted Callus II—dubbed as such by Ellie due to his resemblance to the original Callus—with a sugar cube and stroked his mane. It was still the dumbest name he'd ever heard of for a horse, but it reminded him of her. Besides, the first Callus had played a major role in saving his life—mainly by helping Ellie drag his unconscious ass to safety after he'd been impaled on that rebar—so he figured that he owed it to him.

"Come on, boy," Joel said after mounting up and patting the horse on his neck. "We're heading east."

The horse shook its mane and nickered in response, trotting in the indicated direction with only the lightest kick. Jason and Mark soon joined him on the trail. Jason was a beanpole with a shock of curly red hair who never seemed to put on the slightest bit of weight even though he ate enough for at least two men. Mark was about Joel's height and olive complected, but he had long, straight hair that he kept tied up in a topknot that made Joel shake his head. He kept telling the younger man to cut it and had outlined the dangers of being grabbed by a hunter or the infected or just getting caught on on a branch and yanking him off his damned horse, but Mark always laughed it off and said the women liked it too much for him to ever cut it.

"So, how's Ellie? Haven't seen her around much," Jason said. He tended to joke that he and Ellie were long-lost cousins on account of their being the only two redheads in town.

"On a personal retreat," Joel said tersely. "I'm not Ellie's keeper; she said she'd come back when she was good and ready. Anyhow, don't you need to put on some weight, Jace? You look like a damned scarecrow."

Jason indignantly replied, "Some women _do_ go for skinny guys. Just ask Diane how last night went—she said I was _very_ flexible." He waggled his eyebrows comically.

Mark laughed and grinned at him. "Diane's got nothing on my Amelia you know!"

"Great," Joel said, trying mightily to avoid rolling his eyes. "Now if the two greatest Romeos in Jackson could get their minds off of their dicks, we could get this done and be home before evenin' falls."

Mark impishly said, "We gotta get you hooked up with someone—you're way too tense, Joel. And I gotta tell you that a lot of ladies have told me they like your accent."

He sighed and ignored the comment. Pointing at Jason, Joel said, "You take Zone A, and I'll take B. That leaves C for Mark. Note any breaks on your maps and patch what you can with your kits."

Jason nodded and made as if he were tipping an imaginary hat towards Joel. "Roger that." They split off, and each headed for their section of the fence.

The work was mind-numbing, for which Joel was grateful. It meant that he didn't have to think about the problem of Ellie for a few hours. By the time they were done, it was close to five and he collected their maps for turn-in to the maintenance team. Although they were working on putting up a concrete wall to keep the infected _and_ the hunters out, for now all they had was a fence.

Getting the materials for a major construction project was pretty damned difficult. It's not like you could drive to Home Depot and just pick out what you needed, not even _before_ the apocalypse. They were aiming to send a scavenging party to a cement company someone knew about two towns over, but even if they found materials they could use, it'd take some time before they could haul it back to Jackson.

He stopped off at the canteen in town with the guys, and they shot the breeze over beers before he bowed out and headed home. The first thing that hit him as he walked in was the scent of the rabbit wafting from the stove. The second thing that hit him was Ellie—literally. She cold-cocked him and hit him right in the jaw, leaving him slightly stunned.

Joel shook his head and winced at the throbbing in his jaw. "We good?" he asked.

Ellie grabbed a dishrag and turned the tap on, soaking the tattered cloth in the stream of ice-cold water before wringing it out. She proceeded to dab at his face before folding the rag into a square and handing it to him. He held it to his jaw and sighed in relief.

"We're good...mostly," Ellie said. Thinking it over, she added, "You pull any shit like that again, and I'll bust your nose next time."

Joel nodded. "Fair enough. I'm sorry."

Ellie poked at the rabbit with a fork in a sort of half-hearted attempt to turn it over, gave up, and just used her hands to do it. As she wiped her hands off on another dishrag, she joked, "So, you gave up the world for me, huh? Doesn't seem like a fair trade there, Joel. You could have had your ice cream trucks and creepy music back by now in exchange for donating my brain to science."

Joel grimaced. "Don't say that, Ellie. This world and the people in it, a lot of 'em are assholes—"

She interrupted him and said, "Like you."

He held his hands out in a placating gesture. "The Fireflies, the military, the hunters, and even me—we're what's wrong with this world. Baby girl, you're one of the few good and beautiful things in it."

Ellie blew air out between her lips and narrowed her eyes at him. "You're still a _totally_ selfish dick."

It was enough that she was back, even if she wasn't ready to completely forgive him. He gave her a half-smile and said, "Yeah, I think we've already established that."

"Rabbit's heated up, so let's eat." She plated the food and sat across from him.

They ate in companionable silence, and the meal was delicious thanks to Maria's cooking, which was a whole lot better than his. Joel did his part and washed the dishes, making a mental note to thank Maria later. His thoughts drifted as he scrubbed at the caked-on bits of food, but then the sound of a poorly-played guitar intruded on his reverie. When he was done, he followed his ears and found Ellie out on the porch, strumming away on a guitar that wasn't his and definitely wasn't tuned properly.

Shaking his head, he sat beside her. "Gimme that, would you?"

Ellie handed it over with a bit of reluctance. "Sucks, huh?"

Joel laughed and took it from her gently. "You just need some more practice. Now that you're back, maybe some more lessons are in order—if you want 'em that is."

Ellie nodded. "Sure. I tried practicing on my own to keep from going crazy, but I'm not that great at some of the chords," she said somewhat sheepishly.

"Where'd you get this beauty anyway? Didn't think I'd see a Martin survive the apocalypse," he said, admiring the mother-of-pearl inlay and the herringbone purfling. After he had turned all the tuning pegs and adjusted each string, he strummed a few chords, the sound somehow richer and more resonant as twilight fell and the summer sky darkened to a bruised purple.

Ellie carefully watched his fingers moving up and down the frets, trying to pay close attention to his finger placement as he played a melody that seemed achingly sad. It was like he was pouring all of his buried pain into the steel strings.

"Passed through Granville again and found it in a music store downtown," she said.

Joel frowned at her. "Jesus, Ellie, why the hell would you go there again?"

"Because I saw the music store when we were there—duh," she said as if she were explaining things to an extremely slow child. "I wanted my own guitar to practice on, okay? I already borrow yours way too often, and besides," she paused, sounding pensive, "there were days when I just didn't want to think about what happened or you or Marlene or how I felt."

"Sometimes I'm not sure if you're fearless or crazy, baby girl, but I'm proud of you," Joel said. He started playing a different song, something soulful that had a tinge of blues-infused folk. He hummed along with it and nodded in satisfaction. Then he sang:

 

_I walk through the valley of the shadow of death_

_And I'll fear no evil because I'm blind to it all_

_And my mind and my gun they comfort me_

_Because I know I'll kill my enemies when they come_

_Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life_

_And I will dwell on this earth forevermore_

_Said I walk beside the still waters and they restore my soul_

_But I can't walk on the path of the right because I'm wrong_

_Well I came upon a man at the top of a hill_

_Called himself the savior of the human race_

_Said he come to save the world from destruction and pain_

_But I said how can you save the world from itself_

_'Cause I walk through the valley of the shadow of death_

_And I'll fear no evil 'cause I'm blind_

_And I walk beside the still waters and they restore my soul_

_But I know when I die my soul is damned_

 

As the last chord sounded, Ellie joked, "And _that_ is the soundtrack of your life."

Joel thought about it for a minute and played a quick arpeggio, letting the sprightly, bell-like notes ring. "It's not who I was or what I ever wanted to be, but it's who I am now."

"That sounded dangerously close to being deep," she said.

He handed the guitar over to her and dryly said, "I have my moments."

Ellie played an E chord followed by a C chord. Then she tried a barre chord but couldn't quite get it, wincing at the pain that it caused. "Ow, ow, ow, OW!" she yelped as the strings seemed to cut into the finger that she'd been using to hold all six strings down.

Joel grabbed her hand and said, "Lemme see that." Turning it over, he found no damage, just a red line that indicated she'd used a lot of force and had pressed down hard. "You're fine, but it's goin' to hurt like hell for a while until your fingers toughen up—that's just the way of it."

Ellie squinted at the horizon and saw a flash of light in the distance. "Looks like there's a storm coming."

Joel heard the crack of thunder a few seconds later. He got up and opened the door, anxious to get inside before the storm reached town. "Now scoot and get on in the house unless you want to take your chances with the lightnin'," he said, still holding the door open.

Ellie ducked below his arm and grabbed her guitar and she moved past him. "Will you teach me that song?"

"Sure, first thing tomorrow, baby girl," he murmured, looking at the clouds as they slowly rolled closer. Joel felt a strange sense of foreboding and tried to shake it off as he closed the door behind him. _There was a storm coming, but it was a ways off—nothing to worry about,_ he thought, _nothing at all._

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
